Love and Loss

I'm 62 so I guess it is just par for the course. However, it is hard to look around and have all the people older than you that you grew up  with (parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, teachers, ministers) dead. So that you are all that's left of your past life while you grew up. All that is left now is cousins, my children and their children. All my other relatives are dead and gone now. I have found myself to be kind of weepy the past few weeks. And the dead in Tucson didn't help me with this.

But tonight I was helped by just accepting that everyone older than I (more than 10 years older) that I knew since 1948 when I was born is dead and gone now. Somehow it was a relief to know this is what has been bothering me. I am all that is left of the life I knew growing up except my cousins now, and already 4 of them have now died as well.

I used to wonder what it was like to be old. I can tell you now what it is like. It is like standing in the sand at the ocean with your feet in the ocean. It is like when after the wave breaks it begins to suck the sand out from under your feet with the water returning back into the ocean and you wonder if you might fall down from all the sand leaving from under your feet. This is what it is like to grow old and to lose everyone you knew growing up. So the next time you see someone with that strange elder look in their eyes please remember my  story. If you live long enough you will get there too.